House on Mango Street

Esperanza. Esperanza.As a young girl, Esperanza is a young girl who looks at life from experience of living in poverty, where many do not question their experience. She is a shy, but very bright girl.She dreams of the perfect home, with beautiful flowers and a room for everyone.When she moves to the house of Mango Street, reality is so different than the dream.In this story, hope (Esperanza) sustains tragedy. The house she dreamed of was another on.It was one of her own.One where she did not have to share a bedroom with everyone.That included her mother, father and two siblings.The run down tiny house has “bricks crumbling in places”.The one she dreamed of had a great big yard, trees and ‘grass growing without a fence’.She did not want to abandon where she came from, but she knew she wanted to be free of everything that life on Mango Street brought. “They will not know I have gone away to come back.For the ones I have left behind”.She is committed to her roots on Mango Street. We witness Esperanza blossoming from a innocent, shy girl to one who witnesses much, but all of this makes her strong and clear about her desires for her life.What she sees is the male domination (machismo), violence and rape. The violence in the home was ordinary to those that lived there and Esperanza knew this.It didn’t make Sally stronger.Sally is abused by her father “He never hit me hard”, as her mom tends to her wounds.Sally eventually leaves home and gets married at a young age.She ends being abused, instead by the fist, by mind control.Her new husband treats her like a prisoner in her home.”She sits at become afraid to go outside”.The leave home, she would need permission.She evolves from a victim of child abuse to a slave-like wife. Esperanza sees this despair throughout her story. In “My Name, “She looked out the window her whole life, they way so many women sit, with their sadness on an elbow…